Once we learn to
teach poor Black children, we will likely learn better how to
educate all children—Carol D. Lee, from
Chapter 3 "The State of Knowledge about the Education of
African Americans"

This volume and
the effort of the Commission on Research in Black Education (CORIBE)
. . . disrupts the discourse of Black inferiority and . . .
suggests that the strengths tahta re already present and are
ripe for development among Black peoples are gifts that
humankind the world over so desperately needs . . . . By
blurring the artificially constructed lines between research and
practice CORIBE has produced a volume that speaks to multiple
audiences in multiple ways. It provides a "grammar" of
Black education unlike anything mainstream research has ever
seen.—Gloria Ladson-Billings,
University of
Wisconsin/Madison, from the Foreword

This volume presents the findings and
recommendations of the American Educational Research
Association's (AERA) Commission on Research in Black Education (CORIBE)
and offers new directions for research and practice. By
commissioning an independent group of scholars of diverse
perspectives and voices to investigate major issues hindering
the education of Black people in the U.S., other Diaspora
contexts, and Africa, the AERA sought to place issues of Black
education and research practice in the forefront of the agenda
of the scholarly community. An unprecedented critical challenge
to orthodox thinking, this book makes an epistemological break
with mainstream scholarship.

Contributors present research on proven
solutions—best practices—that prepare Black students and
others to achieve at high levels of academic excellence and to
be agents of their own socioeconomic and cultural
transformation. These analyses and empirical findings also link
the crisis in Black education to embedded ideological biases in
research and the system of thought that often justifies the
abject state of Black education.

Written for both a scholarly and a general
audience, this book demonstrates a transformative role for
research and a positive role for culture in learning, in the
academy, and in community and cross-national contexts.

Volume editor
Joyce E. King is the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair of Urban
Teaching, learning, and leadership at Georgia State University
and was chair of CORIBE—Publisher, Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

She
has published many articles as well that address the role
of cultural knowledge in effective teaching and teacher
preparation, black teachers’ emancipatory pedagogy, research
methods, black studies epistemology and curriculum change.King
is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a Doctor
of Philosophy degree in social foundations and a Bachelor of
Arts degree in sociology. She also holds a certificate from the
Harvard Institute in educational management. Click to purchase Black
Education. There is also a video
documentary

William H.
Watkins is subtle in his story of the “white
architects” who developed Black education beginning
in 1865, just at the end of the Civil War. Watkins
shocks you with his “scientific racism” platform
that he explains “presented human difference as the
rational for inequality” and that it “can be
understood as an ideological and political issue”
(pg. 39). The reader senses a calm attitude about
the author as he speaks of the philanthropists,
beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Sr, who was most
concerned about “shaping the new industrial social
order” (pg. 133) than he was for providing a useful
education. “The Rockefeller group demonstrated how
gift giving could shape education and public policy”
(pg. 134).

In their support of
Black education, by 1964, the General Education Board (GEB)
spent more than $3.2 million dollars in gifts to support Black
education. This captivating book begins with a foreword written
by Robin D.G. Kelley who reflects that he learned one lesson
from Watkins, “If we are to create new models of pedagogy and
intellectual work and become architects of our own education,
then we cannot simply repair the structures that have been
passed down to us. We need to dismantle the old architecture so
that we might begin anew” (pg. xiii). Why don’t the school
reformers who mandate educational laws experience such an
awakening?—Review
by AC Snow

Basil Davidson
obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9
November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a
British
historian, writer and
Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British
colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the
1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly
independent
Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for
a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw
himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in
the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola,
Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the
1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now
won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his
attention to more theoretical questions about the future of
the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate
advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and
dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence
of the nationalists' right to independence from
Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the
revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that
had overthrown Haile Selassie.
Guardian

William H.
Watkins is subtle in his story of the “white
architects” who developed Black education beginning
in 1865, just at the end of the Civil War. Watkins
shocks you with his “scientific racism” platform
that he explains “presented human difference as the
rational for inequality” and that it “can be
understood as an ideological and political issue”
(pg. 39). The reader senses a calm attitude about
the author as he speaks of the philanthropists,
beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Sr, who was most
concerned about “shaping the new industrial social
order” (pg. 133) than he was for providing a useful
education. “The Rockefeller group demonstrated how
gift giving could shape education and public policy”
(pg. 134).

In their support of
Black education, by 1964, the General Education Board (GEB)
spent more than $3.2 million dollars in gifts to support Black
education. This captivating book begins with a foreword written
by Robin D.G. Kelley who reflects that he learned one lesson
from Watkins, “If we are to create new models of pedagogy and
intellectual work and become architects of our own education,
then we cannot simply repair the structures that have been
passed down to us. We need to dismantle the old architecture so
that we might begin anew” (pg. xiii). Why don’t the school
reformers who mandate educational laws experience such an
awakening?—Review
by AC Snow

William H.
Watkins is subtle in his story of the “white
architects” who developed Black education beginning
in 1865, just at the end of the Civil War. Watkins
shocks you with his “scientific racism” platform
that he explains “presented human difference as the
rational for inequality” and that it “can be
understood as an ideological and political issue”
(pg. 39). The reader senses a calm attitude about
the author as he speaks of the philanthropists,
beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Sr, who was most
concerned about “shaping the new industrial social
order” (pg. 133) than he was for providing a useful
education. “The Rockefeller group demonstrated how
gift giving could shape education and public policy”
(pg. 134).

In their support of
Black education, by 1964, the General Education Board (GEB)
spent more than $3.2 million dollars in gifts to support Black
education. This captivating book begins with a foreword written
by Robin D.G. Kelley who reflects that he learned one lesson
from Watkins, “If we are to create new models of pedagogy and
intellectual work and become architects of our own education,
then we cannot simply repair the structures that have been
passed down to us. We need to dismantle the old architecture so
that we might begin anew” (pg. xiii). Why don’t the school
reformers who mandate educational laws experience such an
awakening?—Review
by AC Snow

As an
education
historian
and
former
assistant
secretary
of
education,
Ravitch
has
witnessed
the
trends
in
public
education
over the
past 40
years
and has
herself
swung
from
public-school
advocate
to
market-driven
accountability
and
choice
supporter
back to
public-school
advocate.
With
passion
and
insight,
she
analyzes
research
and
draws on
interviews
with
educators,
philanthropists,
and
business
executives
to
question
the
current
direction
of
reform
of
public
education.
In the
mid-1990s,
the
movement
to boost
educational
standards
failed
on
political
concerns;
next
came the
emphasis
on
accountability
with its
reliance
on
standardized
testing.
Now
educators
are
worried
that the
No Child
Left
Behind
mandate
that all
students
meet
proficiency
standards
by 2014
will
result
in the
dismantling
of
public
schools
across
the
nation.
Ravitch
analyzes
the
impact
of
choice
on
public
schools,
attempts
to
quantify
quality
teaching,
and
describes
the data
wars
with
advocates
for
charter
and
traditional
public
schools.

Ravitch
also
critiques
the
continued
reliance
on a
corporate
model
for
school
reform
and the
continued
failure
of such
efforts
to
emphasize
curriculum.
Conceding
that
there is
no
single
solution,
Ravitch
concludes
by
advocating
for
strong
educational
values
and
revival
of
strong
neighborhood
public
schools.
For
readers
on all
sides of
the
school-reform
debate,
this is
a very
important
book.—Vanessa
Bush

What
would it take? That was the question that
Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What
would it take to change the lives of poor
children—not one by one, through heroic
interventions and occasional miracles, but
in big numbers, and in a way that could be
replicated nationwide? The question led him
to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a
ninety-seven-block laboratory in central
Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes
controversial ideas about poverty in
America. His conclusion: if you want poor
kids to be able to compete with their
middle-class peers, you need to change
everything in their lives—their schools,
their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing
practices of their parents. Whatever It
Takes is a tour de force of reporting,
an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey
Canada but also of the parents and children
in Harlem who are struggling to better their
lives, often against great odds. Carefully
researched and deeply affecting, this is a
dispatch from inside the most daring and
potentially transformative social experiment
of our time.

Paul Tough is an editor at the New York Times
Magazine and one of America's foremost writers on
poverty, education, and the achievement gap.
His reporting on Geoffrey Canada and the
Harlem